Suddenly from out the yard two stocky cream-coloured dogs rushed at him.

They came with incredible swiftness through the snow, considering their short bench legs. Frank waited, head up, ears p.r.i.c.ked. One was a female; it was she who came first. He would not fight a female; he even wagged his tail haughtily. But in a twinkling she was under him and had caught his hind leg in a crushing, grinding grip. He lunged back, snarling, and the other dog sprang straight at his throat.

He was down in the snow, he was on his feet again, he was ripping the short back of the dog at his throat into shreds, his fangs flashing in the dusk. He was dragging them by sheer strength off toward the railroad; but he could not tear that grip from his hind leg, nor that other grip from his throat.

He did not cry out--he was no yelping cur. But it was growing dark, the air was full of snow, the grip was tightening on his throat, the other grip had pulled him down at last to his haunches. Then two men came running toward them, the one white, the other black. The white man grabbed the dog at his throat, the black man the dog under him. The white man was pounding the dog's nose with his fist, was cramming snow down his b.l.o.o.d.y mouth.

"They'll kill him, Will!" he panted. "Go get some water to throw in their faces."

The black man disappeared running--came back running, a bucket in each hand.

And now it was over, and off there the white man held both his dogs by their collars. They were panting, their wrinkled eyes half closed, their mouths dripping b.l.o.o.d.y foam. For many yards around the snow was churned into little hillocks. And there lay old Frank, panting hard, head up, eyes shining.

"Pick him up, Will!" said the white man. "His leg's broke."

"Cap'n," said the negro, "I'm afraid of him."

The white man swore, shaking his dogs angrily. That was some man's bird dog, a fine one, too.

"I believe that's Steve Earle's setter, from Freedom Hill across the river!" he cried above the wind. "By George, I believe that's just who it is! We'll go and get the sled!"

But when they hurried back with the sled the wounded dog was gone. They followed his bloodstained tracks across the field, up the embankment, and to the railroad. They looked at them between the rails, fast filling with snow. The white man put his hands to his ears.

"He'll freeze to-night," he said.

In the teeth of the wind, like a three-legged automaton, Frank was fighting his way doggedly through the night. The wind almost blew him off the embankments; the swirling waves of snow choked him. Maybe he would have lain down, maybe it would have happened as the man said, if it had not been for the spirit within him and for what he saw.

For just before him the superstructure of an iron trestle rose pencilled in snow against the night. Far below a black river wound serpentine into the mists. A mile to the left, he knew, was Squire Kirby's. In those dim bottoms on either side of the trestle he and his master and the squire had hunted a hundred times. The birds had scattered on those wooded hills now vibrant with the blast. Out on the trestle he picked his slow, hesitating way.

Suddenly he cried out sharply. A mighty gust of wind striking him in mid-air and almost hurling him into the blackness below had caused him to put down as a brace his wounded hind leg. Gasping, trembling, he lay down for a minute on the whitened ties, one leg hanging through. Then he rose and doggedly picked his way on.

On the high embankment at the other side of the trestle he stopped and, in spite of the blood stiffened under his throat and the water frozen on his shoulders, he raised his quivering nose. Beyond those misty bottoms, to the left, over those storm-swept ridges, lay Freedom Hill.

Halfway down the embankment he cried out again. He had slipped in the snow and fallen on his leg. Under shelter of the embankment he rested for a moment, panting as if the night were hot. Then lunging, tottering, falling, rising again, panting, gasping but with never another cry, old Frank fought his way up the river bottoms, past the farm of John Davis, across the field in front of Tom Belcher's store, now a dim smudge in the blackness--dragged himself over the last ridge, dragged himself home.

Belly deep in drifted snow he stood at the corner of the lot fence and surveyed the white distance that lay between him and his kennel--more unattainable to his weakness than a quarter of a continent had been to his strength. And while he stood there the roaring of the wind in the great oaks overhead, the cracking of their naked branches, the swirl of snow against his nose and in his eyes, bewildered him, and suddenly something deep within him whispered to him to lie down and rest.

But the sudden terror of death lurked in that whisper and, head dragging in the snow, he staggered across the yard toward his kennel. In here he would crawl and hide from that fearful thing that had told him to lie down in the snow and rest. He reached the kennel, he touched it with his eager nose, he tried to root his way in between the slats which he had not known were there. Then gasping and helpless he sat down before it.

The door of his kennel was nailed up. The great hulk of the house loomed dark and silent above it. Maybe his people were gone!

With this new terror in his heart he fought his way around to the side of the house. Underneath his master's window he raised his head and tried to bark. But the wind s.n.a.t.c.hed the m.u.f.fled sound out of his throat and hurled it away into the darkness. Once more the still small voice that terrified even while it soothed pleaded with him to lie down and rest. Maybe he would have listened now, maybe he would have yielded, if he had not seen through the living-room curtains the sudden flicker of firelight on the ceiling. They were not gone--they were only asleep.

Tail wagging strangely as if someone in there had spoken to him, he rose for the last time and struggled toward the front of the house. At the corner a gust of wind, waiting in ambush, rushed at him and stopped him where he was. A moment he waited for it to die down, then dragged himself to the steps, up the steps, his ruined hind leg hitting each one like a rag tied in a knot and frozen.

By the big front door he sat down and raised to it his suffering eyes. A hundred times it had opened to his whim; now in his need it barred his way. Gathering all his remaining strength, he raised his paw--the paw he shook hands with--and scratched. There was no sound from within.

Once more--it would be the last time, so heavy had his leg become--he raised his paw and scratched. Then careless of all things, of master and mistress, of life and death, he sank down before the door and laid his head on the sill.

He never knew how it happened. He only knew there was a burst of light in his eyes, and somebody had picked him up. Then faces were bent close to him; something hot and gagging was being poured down his throat; a voice--the most commanding voice in all the world--ordered him to swallow, swallow. And now he saw before him, as he lay on his side, a roaring fire whose flames licked and twisted among oak logs piled high into the chimney.

Strange that he had not known that fire all the time; that he had not known who these people were. But then he had been on a long journey, and he was tired, very tired. He must tell them he knew now, let them know he appreciated what they were doing. He always did that even with strangers, and these--they were his master, his mistress, his Tommy. He must----

It was Tommy's shrill voice that broke the silence.

"Look, Papa, look, look! He wagged his tail. He wagged his old tail!"

THE END